Sam Bankman-Fried’s Parents Reportedly Ask Trump To Pardon Their Son, but Could It Actually Happen?

Even the possibility of a pardon or commutation for the fallen founder of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, underscores how the political ground has shifted since the sometime crypto mogul was sentenced to 25 years in prison without the possibility of parole. Bankman-Fried’s parents — Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried — are reportedly exploring the possibility of securing from the 47th president a pardon for their son. Bankman-Fried was convicted in November 2023 on seven criminal counts of fraud and conspiracy and sentenced in March of the following year. At the peak of his career, Bankman-Fried gave vast sums to Democrats and even, according to the journalist Michael Lewis, considered offering President Trump $5 billion not to seek a second term. Mr. Trump, though, has no love for the Department of Justice, which prosecuted Bankman-Fried. A pardon would fall in line with what he granted to the founder of the Silk Road dark web market, Ross Ulbricht, and with his reported interest in dropping the charges against Mayor Adams. The convictions of Bankman-Fried were secured in federal court — the Southern District of New York. That means they are within the ambit of the presidential pardon power, which covers all “offenses against the United States.” Courts have taken that to mean federal but not state crimes. The lead prosecutor in the case, Danielle Sassoon, an assistant United States attorney, has been promoted to acting United States attorney for the Southern District.That could be seen as a sign that Mr. Trump approved of the conviction of Bankman-Fried, who was the second most generous donor to President Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, behind only Mayor Bloomberg. Prosecutors alleged that Bankman-Fried misused customer funds to the tune of $100 million to make political donations before the 2022 midterm elections, mostly to Democrats. Bankman-Fried has disclosed that he gave to conservative causes too, but that “all my Republican donations were dark” because reporters “freak” if “you donate to a Republican, because they’re all super liberal.” The 47th president, in the days before he took the oath for a second term, innovated a meme coin called “$Trump” that has made him tens of billions of dollars — at least on paper.The possibility of Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried — both law professors — approaching Mr. Trump’s camarilla for a pardon is a twist that would challenge Shakespeare. Before Bankman-Fried’s fall Ms. Fried ran a Democratic Super PAC, Mind the Gap, which aimed to spend something like $140 million to elect Democrats in 2020 by using a data driven approach. Ten candidates supported by the group won races in the 2020 midterms. Mind the Gap vowed to its donors that it would undertake the “largest voter registration drive in US history” and that the efforts would “add roughly 3,000,000 people to the voter rolls, chiefly from communities of color, and yield 750,000 additional net votes in the November 2020 election in competitive battleground states across the country.” The group asked its donors to “not circulate any of the highly sensitive information.”Bankman-Fried’s hopes for a pardon, though, could be buoyed by personnel as well as policy. The judge who sentenced him to a quarter century behind bars is Lewis Kaplan, the same jurist who oversaw the writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation cases against Mr. Trump that resulted in more than $80 million in liability for the 47th president. Both Bankman-Fried and Mr. Trump have criticized Judge Kaplan for his handling of their cases. Bankman-Fried’s lawyers, in his appeal, write that “Sam Bankman-Fried was never presumed innocent. He was presumed guilty by the judge who presided over his trial.” They added: “The judge repeatedly made biting comments undermining the defense. Even deriding the defendant’s own testimony during the preview hearing and in front of the jury.”Mr. Trump on Truth Social called Judge Kaplan a “seething and hostile Clinton-appointed Judge. He is abusive, rude, and obviously not impartial but, that’s the way this crooked system works.” He also called Judge Kaplan a “bully” and ventured that he “should be sanctioned for his abuse of power — No wonder our Country is going to Hell!” He reckons that the judge is a “nasty man. He’s a nasty judge. He’s a Trump-hating guy.” The president was especially incensed that Judge Kaplan, during the second trial relating to Ms. Carroll, stated that it should be treated as given that Mr. Trump sexually abused Ms. Carroll, due to a prior jury verdict on the matter. He did not allow Mr. Trump to contest that determination.If Bankman-Fried’s and Mr. Trump’s disdain for Judge Kaplan could provide common ground, their respective relationships with the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell could divide the two men. The white-shoe firm represents FTX, and Bankman-Fried’s appeal, authored by the attorney Alexandra Spiro, alleges that S&C inappropriately cooperated with prosecutors following the exchange’s collapse. Bankman-Fried argued that S&C, which has billed FTX for hundreds of millions of dollars, conducted witness interviews, handed over incriminating documents, and even developed some of the government’s legal theories against its founder. Bankman-Fried’s lawyers reckoned that the government “effectively deputized” S&C to build the case for the prosecution. S&C declined to comment to the Sun, though a federal bankruptcy examiner disclosed that he had “not seen any email or other document in which S&C expressly disclosed a crime to prosecutors or regulators prepetition.” A different tale is told by two scholars, Jonathan Lipson and David Skeel, who argue that “S&C had undisclosed potential conflicts of interest due to apparent errors, omissions and deceptions in their work for the company and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried.”Messrs. Lipson and Skeel allege that “S&C’s role as debtor’s counsel has cast a troubling shadow over puzzling and costly decisions in the case.” That, though, has not stopped Mr. Trump from retaining the firm to represent him in his appeal of his 34 hush money convictions stemming from payments to an adult film star, Stormy Daniels.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s Parents Reportedly Ask Trump To Pardon Their Son, but Could It Actually Happen?

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